Songs to Stand to

We got our Christmas tree. Finally had to retire our decades-old metal stand, due to rust. Found a plastic stand at a tag sale. Aired it out outside in the rain. It appeared not to leak. Then we got the tree, thrust it in the stand, did all the screwy and wiggly things one does, and poured water into it. Seems like I poured into the wrong hole. In any case, the floor was all wet and an investigation of the waterholding properties of the stand is underway.
Found myself humming REM while messing with this stand, in the place where I live.

1. “Stand!,” Sly and the Family Stone. (Exclamatory mark is part of the title.) Greil Marcus writes poetically of Sly and the Family Stone in his classic tome Mystery Train. A cover version of this “Stand,” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers closed the great independent-spirit flick Pump Up the Volume.
2. “Stand,” REM. Though the video’s really more about jumping. “The season is calling,” it says. Hence the Christmas tree stand.
3. “Stand by Me,” Ben E. King.
4. “Not Afraid,” Eminem. “Not afraid to take a stand,” that is.
5. “Stand,” Donnie McClurkin, a God song by a popular gospel singer.
6. “Who’s Gonna Stand Up,” Neil Young. Released just this past September. “Who’s gonna stand up and save the earth? Who’s gonna say that she’s had enough?” (I really should do a list of “gonna” songs one of these days.)
7. The Stand, Original Television Soundtrack, W.G. Snuffy Walden. Out-of-print album of music by the ubiquitous TV-show composer, who was expressly summoned by Stephen King to do the score for this creepy plague miniseries. (Walden currently scores King’s Under the Dome series.)
8. “Stand,” Lenny Kravitz. “You’re gonna run again.” (I really should do a list of “gonna” songs one of these days.) From the Black and White America album, 2011.
9. “Get Up, Stand Up.” This 1973 composition, part of the first wave of reggae consciousness in the U.S., was apparently the last song ever performed live by its co-author, Bob Marley, on tour in Pittsburgh in 1980.
10. “Stand and Deliver,” Adam Ant. In their new book Mad World—An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defiined the 1980s, Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein argue that Adam Ant’s “theatricality, and the sense of community in his calls-to-arms struck a massive chord.”
11. “Stand With Hillary,” country song produced by the Stand With Hillary PAC for the former First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State’s presumably impending 2016 White House run. “Learnin’ hindsights always right.” Shoulda used Lenny Kravitz’s “Stand” instead (“You’re gonna run again.”)
12. Rascal Flatts. More stand country, with a literary tilt: “Life’s like a novel with the end ripped out.”
13. “Stand By Your Man,” Tammy Wynette. The ultimate country stand.
14.“Stand in the Rain,” Nightcore.
15. “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” Ann Peebles.
16. “Stand by You.” The song Chrissie Hynde regretted recording, until she was told by some other sell-out ‘80s star how it touched people.
17. Oasis, “Stand by Me.” “Made a meal and threw it up on Sunday…”
18. One Direction, “Stand up.” “Oh oh oh oh, so put your hands up. Oh oh oh oh, ‘cause it’s a stand up.”
19. Willie Alexander, “Taxi Stand Diane.” 1984 EP by the Boston music scene legend.
20. “Loo, loo, loo, loo, looloo loolooooooo.” Otherwise known as “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” sung wordlessly by those who’d just recently called Charlie Brown a blockhead, when they have second thoughts about a sincere little Christmas tree he purchases in the A Charlie Brown Christmas. Linus Van Pelt’s blanket warms the Christmas tree stand. “All it needed was a little love.”

Bonus tracks: Brylanehome Musical Rotating Christmas Tree Stand. $21.99 from amazon.com. “Plays 8 holiday songs as it spins, to display a 350 degree view of your artificial tree.”81HeY2-DruL._SL1100_